Carbohydrate Syntrophy enhances the establishment of Bifidobacterium breve UCC2003 in the neonatal gut
Open accessAbstract
The non-digestible oligosaccharide fraction of maternal milk represents an important of carbohydrate and energy source for saccharolytic bifidobacteria in the gastrointestinal tract during early life. However, not all neonatal bifidobacteria isolates can directly metabolise the complex sialylated, fucosylated, sulphated and/or N-acetylglucosamine-containing oligosaccharide structures present in mothers milk. For some bifidobacterial strains, efficient carbohydrate syntrophy or crossfeeding is key to their establishment in the gut. In this study, we have adopted advanced functional genomic approaches to create single and double in-frame deletions of the N-acetyl glucosamine 6-phosphate deacetylase encoding genes, nagA1 and nagA2 , of B . breve UCC2003. In vitro phenotypic analysis followed by in vivo studies on co-colonisation, mother to infant transmission, and evaluation of the relative co-establishment of B . bifidum and B . breve UCC2003 or UCC2003ΔnagA1ΔnagA2 in dam-reared neonatal mice demonstrates the importance of crossfeeding on sialic acid, fucose and N-acetylglucosamine-containing oligosaccharides for the establishment of B . breve UCC2003 in the neonatal gut. Furthermore, transcriptomic analysis of in vivo gene expression shows upregulation of genes associated with the utilisation of lactose, sialic acid, GlcNAc-6-S and fucose in B . breve UCC2003, while for UCC2003ΔnagA1ΔnagA2 only genes for lactose metabolism were upregulated.
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The probiotic B. bifidum likely facilitated the establishment of these beneficial Bifidobacterium species through cross-feeding on HMOs, promoting a microbiome composition more similar to that of term infants.
“The probiotic B. bifidum likely facilitated the establishment of these beneficial species through cross-feeding on HMOs54,55, promoting a microbiome composition more similar to that of term infants.”
From Impact of early life antibiotic and probiotic treatment on gut microbiome and resistome of very-low-birth-weight preterm infants. (2025) · cites this paper as [54]
The Discussion (page unavailable) reports that carbohydrate cross-feeding helped B. breve UCC2003 establish in dam-reared neonatal mice co-colonised with B. bifidum PAM5. The study does not show that a B. bifidum probiotic promoted the establishment of multiple beneficial species in human infants or made their microbiomes more similar to those of term infants. (LLM, conf=0.86)
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“Notably, Bi fi dobacterium breve and Bi fi dobacterium longum , both associated with breastfeeding and recognised for promoting a healthy infant gut by breaking down complex carbohydrates, including human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs), appeared earlier and were more abundant in PS infants compared to NPS infants (Fig.”
Transcriptional changes in Bifidobacterium bifidum involved in synergistic multispecies biofilms
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- Authors
- O’Connell Motherway, M., O’Brien, F., O’Driscoll, T., Casey, P. G., Shanahan, F., & van Sinderen, D.
- Affiliations
- National University of Ireland (IE)
- Venue
- Scientific Reports
- Published
- 2018-07-13
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 1
- Pages
- 10627-10627
- ISSN
- 2045-2322 (ISSN-L)
- PMC
- PMC6045583
- OpenAlex
- W2841881125
- Cited by
- 29
- References
- 32
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 3 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 4 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 4 · 2019: 1 · 2018: 1
- FWCI
- 2.27
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- gold
- doi.org
- Locations
- Scientific Reports (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, other-oa)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Arrow@dit (Dublin Institute of Technology) (acceptedVersion)
- HAL (submittedVersion)
- Cork Open Research Archive (University College Cork, Ireland) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
- DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Science Foundation Ireland (SFI/12/RC/, 12/RC/2273, 12/RC/, SFI/12/RC/2273.)
- Topics
- Health Sciences › Nursing › Nutrition and Dietetics › Infant Nutrition and Health
- Life Sciences › Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology › Molecular Biology › Gut microbiota and health
- Life Sciences › Agricultural and Biological Sciences › Food Science › Probiotics and Fermented Foods
- Keywords
- sialic acid metabolism, fucose metabolism, N-acetylglucosamine metabolism, Bifidobacterium bifidum, mother-to-child transmission, lactose metabolism
- MeSH terms
- Bifidobacterium breve, Bifidobacterium bifidum, Animals, Animals, Newborn, Bacterial Proteins, Female, Lactose, Milk, Oligosaccharides, Symbiosis, Up-Regulation, N-Acetylneuraminic Acid, Gene Expression Profiling, Gastrointestinal Tract, alpha-N-Acetylgalactosaminidase, Carbohydrate Metabolism, Mice
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